User-centered evaluation of sharing economy applications in the hospitality industry

Associated with the spread of the sharing economy, those who used it, have had the opportunity to benefit from products and/or services that will benefit them easier with lower costs. The sharing economy is basically based on renting a product and/or service from one user to another through a platform for a certain payment. In many different sectors, the spread of the sharing economy may give rise to some concerns, including security and economic risks. It can be stated that when the subject is especially the tourism and accommodation sector, the existing risks are more than the economic risks. Due to these security concerns brought about by the sharing economy, before customers rent a product and/or service, they examined what the other users who experienced it before said; as well they may even pay attention to these reviews in a way that influences their final decisions. A user can evaluate a product and/or service experienced before by giving a rating or both giving ratings and texting a comment. The comments made by the users in order to evaluate the product and/or service they rent are very important in the sharing economy, as in every other field. In this study, the valuable comments made by the users staying in Airbnb-Istanbul over the Airbnb company operating in the tourism and accommodation sector, which is one of the sectors where the sharing economy is most widely used, have been analyzed and a new scoring system has been proposed, which is thought to guide users better. While designing the scoring system for each Airbnb-Istanbul posting, the comments published by customers were used. The comments were evaluated in terms of different categories using sentiment analysis and topic modeling techniques, and after all, it was aimed to provide customers with different perspectives by re-scoring each house.